HALF PAST 11:00 sleeps in my bed and refuses to be
roused. I tuck the sheets tight before I leave for work,
but Half Past 11:00 musses them up. Slumped at my
desk, I can't stop thinking about Half Past 11:00, who
sinks into the mattress and burrows a hollow shaped
like a crescent moon, which has not slept there for
years.
∞
HALF PAST 11:00 clings to the seawall inside me,
a barnacle on my uterus, only observable when the
surgeon inserts a tube above the navel. Blue masks
lean close. Shadows flit across my ocean floor and,
beyond cliffs and canyons, a muffled snore. Take it
out! I cry. The surgeon's pincers can't grab hold—
∞
HALF PAST 11:00 slumbers in the rear of the
freezer, wrapped in plastic and clinging to a gray side
of beef, not forgotten but preserved, and why? I've
moved to a new house, a new job, a new lover. Still,
there's Half Past 11:00, a drowsy glacier in a swirl of
arctic steam, crystalizing and thawing in the light
from the door I left open.
∞
8:00 P.M. raps at my door and claims to be Half Past
11:00. I want to believe this, so I arrange daylilies in
a vase on the credenza. My sister follows me through
the house, sweeping up the rust. She knows that 8:00
is an imposter, but what's the harm? The resemblance,
she says, is uncanny.
The daylilies are replicas, and the credenza, too.
Everything in our house, down to the frame that
once held Half Past Yesterday, imitates something
that 8:00 P.M. spirited away. My sister offers to call
the police, but what good would that do? We are
replicas, too.
